There's a lot of good advice here from other posters on living frugally which is all good stuff and I highly recommend you take what people have said on board about living cheaper. I'd like to make a comment about your situation as a whole.
You left your job in April, that's May through to January where you've had no salary. 8 months. You're looking at 'another 5-7 months' before funding in a recession. In effect, what you're saying is that you're looking at 12 months of unpaid work and wiping out your savings in the middle of an economic downturn in the hope that you'll find a business investor who has the cash to fund your deferred salaries, anyone elses deferred salaries (and if you're the only one then you need to change that) as well as investment moving forward.
In any economic climate what you're suggesting doesn't make sense to an investor, you need to either write that entire year's salary off or drastically change what you're doing. An investor is not there to fund salaries, especially backdated ones. If you want to move forward, you need to find a revenue stream. If you can't find a revenue stream but want to stay involved then you need to find a job and cut your involvement back.
The suggestion about Thailand makes a lot more sense than it first seems. Moving to somewhere that costs a lot less to live with your current 5-7months of new york money will give you a hefty safety net, you could take interesting projects on as and when and could possibly retain some involvement in the startup working from somewhere like Thailand, Morocco, Mexico or even the mid-west.
I hope it works out for you, if you are determined to keep at this project full time unpaid then you need to move out of NYC sooner rather than later. I would advise that you reconsider your level of involvement as this is not a profitable or revenue generating opportunity, which is what you need right now and over the coming year.
I didn't mean to imply that I'm 5-7 months from a funding event. I have 5-7 months left of savings. I keep hearing that funding prospects look good, but I don't know for sure because I'm not directly involved in the fundraising, which is good, because I'd probably have an aneurysm if I had to deal with that. I'd rather work on Wall Street than be trying to raise money.
Yeah, I moved to poland for four months for basically this reasons.
It seemed kind of bizarre, but it did make my money last a lot longer, even with the travel cost of getting there and back.
However, I had a friend to move in with so I wouldn't get lonely in an environment where I didn't know the language or culture. Without this, it probably would have been impossible. (I would likely have gotten depressed and unable to get any work done.)
You left your job in April, that's May through to January where you've had no salary. 8 months. You're looking at 'another 5-7 months' before funding in a recession. In effect, what you're saying is that you're looking at 12 months of unpaid work and wiping out your savings in the middle of an economic downturn in the hope that you'll find a business investor who has the cash to fund your deferred salaries, anyone elses deferred salaries (and if you're the only one then you need to change that) as well as investment moving forward.
In any economic climate what you're suggesting doesn't make sense to an investor, you need to either write that entire year's salary off or drastically change what you're doing. An investor is not there to fund salaries, especially backdated ones. If you want to move forward, you need to find a revenue stream. If you can't find a revenue stream but want to stay involved then you need to find a job and cut your involvement back.
The suggestion about Thailand makes a lot more sense than it first seems. Moving to somewhere that costs a lot less to live with your current 5-7months of new york money will give you a hefty safety net, you could take interesting projects on as and when and could possibly retain some involvement in the startup working from somewhere like Thailand, Morocco, Mexico or even the mid-west.
I hope it works out for you, if you are determined to keep at this project full time unpaid then you need to move out of NYC sooner rather than later. I would advise that you reconsider your level of involvement as this is not a profitable or revenue generating opportunity, which is what you need right now and over the coming year.